ude any of that rough bunch in this dance.

"Look how that young devil, Lance Lorrigan, abused my Bill, right
before everybody!" she cited, shifting her youngest child, who was
teething, to her hip that she might gesticulate more freely. "And look
how they all piled into our crowd and beat 'em up! Great way to
do--give a dance and then beat up the folks that come to it! And look
at what Lance done right here in town--as if it wasn't enough, what
they done out there! Bill's got a crick in his back yet, where Lance
knocked him over the edge of a card table. You pay 'em for the piano,
Hope; I'll help yuh scare up a crowd. But don't you have none of the
Lorrigans, or there'll be trouble sure!"

Mary Hope flushed. "I could hardly ask the Lorrigans to come and help
pay for their own present," she pointed out in her prim tone. "I had
never intended to ask the Lorrigans."

"Well, maybe not. But if you did ask them, I know lots of folks that
wouldn't go a step--and my Bill's one," said Mrs. Kennedy.

So much depends upon one's point of view. Black Rim gossip, which
persisted in linking Mary Hope's name with Lance Lorrigan, grinned
among themselves while they mentioned the piano, the schoolhouse, and
the library as evidence of Lance's being "stuck on her." The Boyle
children had frequently tattled to Mary Hope what they heard at home.
Lance had done it all because he was in love with her.

Denial did not mend matters, even if Mary Hope's pride had not
rebelled against protesting that the gossip was not true. Lance
Lorrigan was not in love with her. Over and over she told herself so,
fiercely and with much attention to evidence which she considered
convincing. Only twice she had seen him in the two weeks of his visit.
Once he had come to mend the lock his father had broken, and he had
taken her home from the dance because of the fighting. Never had he
made love to her.... Here she would draw a long breath and wonder a
little, and afterwards shake her head and say to herself that he
thought no more of her than of Jennie Miller. He--he just had a way
with him.

Mary Hope's point of view was, I think, justifiable. Leaving out the
intolerable implication that Lance had showered benefits upon her, she
felt that the Lorrigans had been over-generous. The schoolhouse and
the books might be accepted as a public-spirited effort to do their
part. But the piano, since it had not been returned, must be paid for.
And it seemed to Mary Ho